The present invention relates in general to high speed logic circuitry, and in particular to current-controlled CMOS (sometimes referred to as C3MOS, C3MOS, or C3MOS™) logic circuits with inductive broadbanding.
For a number of reasons CMOS is the logic family of choice in today's VLSI devices. Due to the complementary nature of its operation, CMOS logic consumes zero static power. CMOS also readily scales with technology. These two features are highly desirable given the drastic growth in demand for low power and portable electronic devices. Further, with the computer aided design (CAD) industry's focus on developing automated design-tools for CMOS based technologies, the cost and the development time of CMOS VLSI devices has reduced significantly.
The one drawback of the CMOS logic family, however, remains its limited speed. That is, conventional CMOS logic has not achieved the highest attainable switching speeds made possible by modem sub-micron CMOS technologies. As a result of the speed limitations of conventional CMOS logic, integrated circuit applications in the Giga Hertz frequency range have had to look to alternative technologies such as ultra high speed bipolar circuits and Gallium Arsenide (GaAs). These alternative technologies, however, have drawbacks of their own that have made them more of a specialized field with limited applications as compared to silicon MOSFET that has had widespread use and support by the industry. In particular, compound semiconductors such as GaAs are more susceptible to defects that degrade device performance, and suffer from increased gate leakage current and reduced noise margins. Furthermore, attempts to reliably fabricate a high quality oxide layer using GaAs have not thus far met with success. This has made it difficult to fabricate GaAs FETs, limiting the GaAs technology to junction field-effect transistors (JFETs) or Schottky barrier metal semiconductor field-effect transistors (MESFETs). A major drawback of the bipolar technology, among others, is its higher current dissipation even for circuits that operate at lower frequencies.